I honestly don't think the problem was with Ellie being a lesbian, just more because the recent Battlefield V kerfuffle has left people more aware and angry of this sort of pandering. It just came at a bad moment. People are also anxious to know what happened to Joel, which I suspect isn't around because of the ending to the last game and Ellie finds out.
Or that Joel was killed by the cult members and Ellie is out for revenge. Maybe she split with Joel over the last ending and is somehow responsible for getting him killed. Which spills into hatred and self loathing. She never got to apologize to him for the split, and he died before. So she kind of loses her mind with anger. Joel is presented as Ellie's delusion throughout the game and tries to act as her conscious.
I think a really interesting twist would be is that the party she's at is one of the cult members hoe-downs, as in she's infiltrating them to hollow them out from the inside. I sort of suspect this because the Asian says they have to go out on patrol in the morning. And Ellie's girlfriend in that trailer is part of the cult. Which is why she goes, 'I'm not afraid of you' *cut to Ellie fucking murdering everything* and then she goes, 'You should be.' Its mostly a stealth action game because Ellie has to kill anyone who finds out about her double cross, so you can run and hide, but you can't let anyone live.
An interesting decision would be choosing to murder your girlfriend who is a true believer, and might not have killed Joel, but killed other people. IE: Not a good person. However, I think a better story is that Ellie is acting like a honeypot ala spycraft to seduce a cult member to get information out of her. Ellie isn't in love with her at all, fucking hates her, and is just using her. You don't get a choice to 'save' her because Ellie is full of hate, even if you get to know her as a person. Because Ellie doesn't give a fuck.
However, I think that's too complex a story for this day and age and would upset too many people that Ellie isn't truly gay (she might be. Another twist would be that she isn't, her pure hate is just driving her to do things that are pretty terrible) or in love, nevermind the hundreds of spies who pretended to be gay or lesbian to get information out of people. Or pretended to be in love with them.
Fuck, I want to play that game now. I know the story isn't going to be anything like this and its just going to be a typical girlfriend gets killed and shit for exploiting emotion.
